How the 2025 Ranking Methodology Reflects Gig Workers’ Access to Key Benefits and Policies
In our 2025 Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies, we remain dedicated to capturing companies’ commitment to all of their stakeholders. We also recognize the importance of addressing the whole of each stakeholder, which in a practical application can mean the entirety of a company’s workforce – including workers who aren’t legally or technically considered employees.
To that end, prior to the 2023 Rankings, we employed an “Under Review” designation for companies that meet two criteria: business models that center gig workers and self-identification as members of the Flex Association. This applied to three companies in our Russell 1000 universe at the time: Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash.
Beginning with the 2023 Rankings, we have been reaching out to these companies requesting additional data to help us more accurately capture the experience of gig workers and to ensure that these companies’ scores reflect the entirety of their workforce. In our outreach to Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, we request public company sources with information about the share of gig workers in their workforce, as well as the offerings and policies accessible to them. Using the information provided, we proportionately discount the scores of these companies across our Workers stakeholder data points when there is no evidence that gig workers are covered by the offerings or workplace policies tracked in our model.
This year, in our review of companies meeting these criteria, we determined that Maplebear (Instacart), which joined our Russell 1000 universe, should also receive a similar treatment.
We recognize that our work in capturing the workplace experience of the many Americans who work in the gig economy, or more broadly as contractors, remains in progress, but we believe that continuing this approach is a step in the right direction. Our team will work to further refine our methodology to ensure that we best capture companies’ commitment to all their workers.
